Page 100 of White Wolf

Nikita went from relatively calm to slick with cold sweat in a matter of seconds. The bell wasringing. He’d had the thing since he was born – he had dim memories of pawing at it as a toddler – and never once had it made noise on its own. But there was no denying its oddly clear chime, and the vibration of it inside his pocket.

“Jesus,” he said, curse and prayer both. “I don’t…” Words failed him. He stared at his pocket and wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to reach inside it and lay his hand on what was, no doubt, an enchanted object of some sort.

Werewolves, vampires, mages. What was one more layer of insanity to add to all that?

But the bell was the line, apparently, as he stood rooted to the spot, gaping.

Katya, though, was much braver than him in this instance. She hooked her rifle over her shoulder by its strap and slithered down out of the tree, lithe as a sable, landing on her feet in front of him. “What is that?” She bent at the waist to squint at his pocket, which put her face on level with his–

Despite his shameful fit of terror, his mind threw up an image that made his heart pound for a different reason. He imagined her leaning in even closer, pressing her hand to the front of his pants, imagined the warmth of her breath, hot and stirring even through the thick wool serge. Would she know how to do it? Draw him out of his clothes and take him into her hot, sweet mouth? Or would he have to tell her? Would he –

He took a step back, swaying like he was drunk. “Here, I…” His hand felt stiff, like he’d buried it in a snowbank without a glove, when he shoved it roughly into his pocket and curled it around the bell. The sound cut off at once, but the bell was warm against his skin. Hot, even. Not just his body heat, he didn’t think.

“It sounded like a bell,” Katya said, straightening. She looked at him expectantly.

He released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “It is a bell.” Unaccountably nervous, he drew it out of his pocket and opened his hand so she could see it.

It was the same as it always had been: tarnished, dented on one side, unremarkable in all ways, save the Cyrillic writing on the inside.Our Friend. The royal family had called Philippe that, and then, later, Rasputin.

“Family heirloom?” Katya guessed, because it had an obvious look of age about it.

“Yes,” he said, because itwas…even if it wasn’t his family. “It’s supposed to” – he felt like a fool, repeating the thing his mother had always told him about the object – “ring when dark forces are near.” But given all that he’d learned in the last few months, he didn’t suppose it sounded bizarre after all.

Katya snorted. “Dark forces. Including you?”

He almost smiled at that. “Probably.” But there were still phantom ants marching up the back of his neck. He’d always considered the bell to be nothing more than peace of mind – and now, after the fall of the empire, a potentially-expensive trinket. A collector somewhere would no doubt love to have it. He hadn’t thought it had any actual power.

Then again, it had belonged to Philippe, andhecertainly had power.

He blew out a breath and put it back in his pocket. “Maybe we imagined the noise,” he suggested.

Katya gave him a look. “Trust me: nothing that’s happened is anything I ever would have imagined.”

~*~

The exercise was a simple one: track all members of his human pack, sneak up on them if possible, and incapacitate them. Or pretend to, at least. Sasha knew he could render them unconscious with one good strike, and so only mimed it, which drew chuckles from everyone.

Katya even threw up both hands from her perch in a tree, mouth a little O of fake surprise, grinning when he yipped up at her. If he had a tail to wag, he would have.

Once everyone was “caught,” they trooped back to find Monsieur Philippe waiting at camp, looking serene with his eyes shut.

He opened them when they were a few yards off, smiling, as usual. “Well done, Sasha. Not that I doubted you.”

Pleasantly tired and sore from the excursion, Sasha flopped down onto the forest floor and his wolves piled up around him. Snuffling and competing for the chance to sit closest to him. He reached for the omega himself, invited the coltish young wolf to climb half into his lap and rest his head on his knee. He always needed a little extra encouragement and affection, to know that his alpha loved him.

His humans sat on the logs and piles of firewood they’d arranged around the fire pit last night.

Ivan screwed off the top of his vodka canteen and took a long sip. He, like the others, smelled of sweat and unwashed skin. No doubt they could smell themselves when they crawled into their bedrolls at night, but Sasha smelled themintensely. It was how he’d found all of them right away during the exercise, following their scent trails across creeks and over hills and even, in Pyotr’s case, between the branches of trees after he’d shinnied up and then swung from branch to branch, moving like the New World monkeys Sasha had only ever seen in books.

He could smell that Katya had gone through her monthly cycle earlier in the week, the smell of thick, clotted blood. And he could smell that Ivan’s wound, the place where the bullet had grazed his side, still oozed a different kind of blood – thin but vital, dangerous. So far, he couldn’t detect the sour-rot smell of infection, but it needed a proper cleaning, and some stitches. It was good they’d be going back to the base soon.

He recalled the prince, Val, and his total lack of scent. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Monsieur Philippe what a projection was – and if it was even real – but he thought about what Val had warned him of, and he held his tongue for now. He wasn’t the sort of person who kept secrets, at least he hadn’t been before. But he hadn’t been a wolf before, either. Things changed.

“We should head back to the base at first light,” Philippe said. “It’s a long trip to Petersburg.”

~*~

They were going back. Back to a roof, and four walls, and showers. Clean clothes, hot food cooked indoors. Fresh underpants and shampoo and, thank God, a real bed with a pillow and sheets.

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